Position · 318

Theosis

Salvation as union with God: humans come to share in the divine life, becoming by grace what God is by nature, a phrase common in Orthodox writing.

Athanasius put it most famously in On the Incarnation (often dated c. 318): God became human so that humans might become divine. In the 14th century Gregory Palamas clarified that this sharing is in God’s uncreated energies, not his essence, so the line between creature and Creator stays intact.

Theosis frames salvation as healing and transformation more than legal acquittal. That is one reason Orthodox theology never had a Reformation-style fight over justification.